pbem campaigning what is in best in life?

hellcat · Post by **hellcat** » Sun Jan 12, 2003 8:19 pm

Having agreed to Squirmer in the Russian Steel campaign for pbem it has got me thinking...

is there a campaign out there at the moment that is better suited to pbem play? I know the usual 'most campaigns are for playing against the AI...' line but I'd be interested if anyone has any insight into this... and also (wishlist here) whether anyone has thought of designing a pbem friendly campaign...

If I've missed one that exists under old threads please forgive, I've been freeze dried for a while and only recently back here...

long campaign vs other campaigns for pbem? thoughts?

Supervisor · Post by **Supervisor** » Mon Jan 13, 2003 4:47 am

Unless you cross over the the H2H (where it has an updated Stalingrad campaign for it) I can't think of one.:p The updated version of this same campaign for SPWAW may also work.

john g · Post by **john g** » Mon Jan 13, 2003 8:32 am

Originally posted by hellcat
Having agreed to Squirmer in the Russian Steel campaign for pbem it has got me thinking...

is there a campaign out there at the moment that is better suited to pbem play? I know the usual 'most campaigns are for playing against the AI...' line but I'd be interested if anyone has any insight into this... and also (wishlist here) whether anyone has thought of designing a pbem friendly campaign...

If I've missed one that exists under old threads please forgive, I've been freeze dried for a while and only recently back here...

long campaign vs other campaigns for pbem? thoughts?

What about Flesh and Steel the Munda campaign?

It has small forces, is reletively short and the Japanese have mostly fortifications. What few movable units they have should give the Japanese player something to move, while most of their turns will be spent firing fixed units. The exception being the attack on the tank laager, with a truely coordinated attack it would be even worse than it is now.

If they are too tough there is always the pref screen, dropping the former ai side down to 70% hit and morale will generally make up for having too many units.

The only campaign that is too lopsided when played by a human is probobly Rommel to the Rescue. If the allied tanks held back and then swarmed late in the battle, instead of getting fed in a few at a time, there would be no way the Germans could hold.
thanks, John.

hellcat · Post by **hellcat** » Mon Jan 13, 2003 8:37 am

thanks John! small certainly seems the way to go with pbem and campaigning I think... so far the Russian Steel attempt seems like it won't have too much mileage in it... (unless we treat each scenario as a new purchase from scratch which kinda defeats the object - or does it? - hmmm)

I've not yet played either of those campaigns against the AI yet...

cheers

hellcat

Squirmer · Post by **Squirmer** » Mon Jan 13, 2003 2:44 pm

Well I don't know about our Russian Steel endeavour not having mileage. I'm certainly having fun

I do agree it's far from ideal though. Problems as I see them:

1) Scenarios are designed for playing against the AI and are therefore probably unbalanced against the campaigner when played in human to human mode. This will likely lead to a large-scale decimation of the core force which cannot be repaired with the points available.

2) For the same reason of design for the AI there may be various irritating quirks in the scenarios such as I have documented in our DAR thread.

3) Only one person gets to do the campaign bit (biggie this one).

Now points 1 and 2 could I suppose be addressed by someone creating or modifying an existing campaign specifically for PBEM play.

However point 3, if possible at all (I'm not sure), could only be addressed by the creation of an additional piece of software. You would certainly lose compatibility with existing campaigns.

hellcat · Post by **hellcat** » Mon Jan 13, 2003 3:06 pm

Squirmer I'm having great fun with our rs game, I was only saying that I doubt we will get to play through the campaign due to the generally higher level of casualties...

it is possible we can effectively restart the campaign each scenario (am looking into this but seems possible)

the long campaign does allow both players to purchase forces in pbem I believe... except the non-campaign player purchases new forces each scenario (I'm sure I read that somewhere, easy to test though...)

I think it's near impossible to develop a campaign for both pbem and AI play though... It has to be one or the other from a play balance perspective I would say.

Squirmer · Post by **Squirmer** » Tue Jan 14, 2003 1:38 am

Never doubted the fun aspect

This is a great map/scenario.

hellcat is absolutely right, I just didn't see it so quick since I am playing the Germans. It is evident with each turn we play that this campaign will not work in PBEM as designed. Whatever the result of the first game the Russian core force will be so decimated as to make repair impossible with the default amount of points. This of course will unbalance the next scenario and so on.

Not really sure what to do. Still there are 18 more turns to think about it ...

hellcat · Post by **hellcat** » Tue Jan 14, 2003 2:51 am

am happy to play on and if possible we can maybe work out a repurchase method... my logic may not be sound but is it possible to edit out the previous scenario thereby 'restarting' the campaign with purchase points and the 2nd scenario becoming the new first scenario???

can anyone advise?

Squirmer · Post by **Squirmer** » Wed Jan 15, 2003 2:20 am

It does seem possible to do that sort of editing, but it's a lot of work. Involves copying all the campaign scenarios to the SCEN directory, renaming them and then editing the campaign each time to start with the N+1 scenario. You also totally lose the campaign aspects that way and just play the scenarios in order with no branching.

How about just increasing the build points from scenario 2 onwards? Say by a factor of 2. Leave the support and reinforcement points as they are.

hellcat · Post by **hellcat** » Wed Jan 15, 2003 12:26 pm

sure that would be easier I guess (although I don't think there is any branching in the Russian Steel campaign - but I haven't checked in fact)

in my aar of RS1 (Decisive at Dubno) I managed to purchase 1 whole forward observer which was all I could afford after the refit. Let's see what the outcome is at Dubno and decide how to proceed... yes?

Squirmer · Post by **Squirmer** » Wed Jan 15, 2003 3:48 pm

OK we'll play it by ear

There does appear to be some branching in RS later on ...

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As an aside, I figured out a theoretical way to make a campaign for PBEM where both players can get experience bonuses. This bypasses the normal core force/exp bonus system, both sides would have fixed sets of units in each scenario.

What you could do is have several versions of a scenario with different experience levels for both sides. Based upon the result of the previous scenario the campaign would branch to the appropriate one.

Scen 1 (P1=70,P2=70):

Player 1 Wins --> Scen 2 (P1=80,P2=70)
Draw --> Scen 2 (P1=70,P2=70)
Player 2 Wins --> Scen 2 (P1=70,P2=80)

And so on. Obviously the exp bonus needn't be 10, it could be 5 or indeed any number. As an alternative you could decrease the exp value on a win rather than increase it so as to even things up.

The number of variations required increases exponentially so to make a campaign 4 scenarios in length would require 3 ^ 4 scenarios (243). If you could somehow eliminate the prospect of a draw you could make a campaign 8 scenarios in length for only a little more money (2 ^ 8 = 256).

I hope my sums are correct. Regardless, this is obviously not a practical prospect unless there is a way to non-interactively edit scenarios to change exp levels. Something like the way Mountainiser makes changes to maps.

pbem campaigning what is in best in life?

pbem campaigning what is in best in life?

Re: pbem campaigning what is in best in life?